Fender Design Challenge

Fender Design:

A fender is a curved portion of the car’s body that is placed over the wheels and also houses them. The main purpose of the fender is to prevent sand, mud, stones, liquids or other things on the road from being thrown into air by the rotation of the tires. It is for the safety of the pedestrians as well as the vehicle.

Fender is also known by other terms as Wings & Quarter panel.

Fender is of two types:

• Full Bumper type
• Half Bumper type

Currently Half bumper type is chosen especially for the below reasons

• Scrap management: In full bumper type the blank size is more; on the other hand, two half bumper type fenders can be produced in one blank by increasing the size a little.
• Weight reduction: When half bumper type fender is used, the size of the metal part is reduced, which help in reducing the weight, which in turn increases the performance of the vehicle.

Mounting of the fender (front):

For mounting of the fender there are five points

• A Pillar
• Body
• Cowl
• Drip
• Sill

Fender is usually mounted with the help of the fasteners.

Designing the fender:

Skin of the fender is provided by the styling team. Below is the skin provided for the fender.

Fender is desiged based on the master sketch provided below.

Drip area:

Drip area mounting is an important feature for the fender design. This mounting is done on the engine compartment. The height of the drip should be less than 60mm to avoid springback effect. But the value of 40mm would be ideal when considering the tool size.

The drip area should be 150mm away from the front side; this space is required to accommodate the parts of the head lamps. And 200mm from the cowl top side, since the space is required for accommodating the wiper motors and other parts which gets assembled in the cowl.

To prevent the withering of the drip area, a structure is provided at the edge of the drip, but there should be a clearance of 10mm between the edge of the drip area and the edge of the part in the engine compartment.

As the drip area is slightly longer, darts can be provided to strengthen the region.

Bumper Mounting:

Sill Mounting:

Baffle/Splash Mounting:

Baffle is a plastic part which is assembled to the fender for the NVH factor. In India, baffles are mostly used in diesel engine cars.

Design considerations:

The below design considerations are not alone for the fender but also for any sheet metal component.

• The mounting hole should have flat surface of at least 5mm around them.
• The mounting surfaces should be flat. All the mounting surfaces analyzed with local radius.
• The mounting holes should be provided in the direction of the tool (along the vector not normal to the face).
• The blends should be at least 3 times the thickness of the part.

Final Part :